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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27112808">Fracture</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/batwayneman/pseuds/batwayneman'>batwayneman</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Batman (Comics), Batman - All Media Types</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Angst, Gen, Hurt No Comfort, Injury, Knightfall, Major Character Injury, Whump, some ableism from Bane probably, the what happened after Bane snapped Bruce like a kitkat fic, there are references and allusions to Jason and Jason's death but he's not actually here</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-10-20</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-10-20</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 17:07:20</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Graphic Depictions Of Violence</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>4,507</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27112808</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/batwayneman/pseuds/batwayneman</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Fracture: the act of breaking; state of being broken</p>
<p>When Batman broke, it echoed. Snapshots of different POVs from that night.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>4</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>40</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Fracture</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>This takes place during Knightfall (Detective Comics 664 specifically, though you don't need to know the issue to get the gist). So uhh, spoilers for that issue I guess. Some dialogue is taken directly from the issue – those will be cited in the endnotes.</p>
<p>Though a lot of this follows the issue pretty closely, there were plenty of things I changed, or just completely ignored.</p>
<p>Like Azrael. Sorry to any Azrael fans.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <em>BANE</em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>It was easy. That was the disappointing part. All the years of training and planning and preparing, and in the end, it was easy.</p>
<p>He’d watched Batman face down the prisoners that Bane had released from Arkham, as he struggled to put even the most pathetic of them back in jail. Regardless, he had held out hope that Batman might rise to the occasion to face him, be a worthy opponent.</p>
<p>If he were feeling charitable, he would say that Batman had put up a good fight. But truthfully, aside from a few lucky hits, he had barely been a challenge.</p>
<p>Bane had planned on killing him. It was all he had thought about for some time, had imagined what it would look like when the light left his eyes.</p>
<p>But Batman had refused to beg him for mercy. Even after Bane had bested him, he still wouldn’t beg. He wouldn’t even grant Bane this final victory.</p>
<p>So his plans had changed. Batman would live in a broken body, and live with the choice he had made. He would have to live with what Bane did to him.</p>
<p>He looked down into the street, at the people below. There needed to be an audience to the defeat, proof that his legacy of Batman had ended.</p>
<p>“Gotham,” he yelled, “Batman is no more. I have destroyed him.” He picked up the limp body of the broken man, held him above his head for a moment, and threw him into the street below.</p>
<p>“Here is your hero. Your protector. Take him and <em>bury</em> him.”</p>
<p>He stayed on the roof for a moment, enjoying the sounds of the commotion and screams, before turning away.</p>
<p>Batman was finished. Long live Bane.</p>
<p> </p>
<hr/>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>RENEE MONTOYA</em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>She had heard a commotion from a block away, and by the time she had turned down the street, a crowd of people had already shown up and were blocking her view of the whatever-it-was.</p>
<p>“Do you wanna wager? I got fifty bucks on another burrito rat,” Bullock said from beside her.</p>
<p>“GCPD! Clear a path!” she said, walking towards the crowd. Some people parted, glancing fearfully at her, but most seemed frozen in place.</p>
<p>“GCPD, MOVE!” yelled Bullock, which was slightly more effective.</p>
<p>Renee pushed her way to the front of the crowd, and froze.</p>
<p>Batman was lying on the ground, apparently unconscious.</p>
<p>His suit was torn and damaged in places, skin bruised where it was exposed, blood smeared across what she could see of his face. The way the armour plates caved in made her concerned about broken ribs underneath.</p>
<p>Renee’s stomach turned. His knee was horribly broken, lower leg pointing the wrong way. The way he was lying, back arched stiffly, made her worried about his spine.</p>
<p>“Is that actually him?” Bullock asked from behind her. His voice snapped her out of her haze.</p>
<p>“Has anyone called an ambulance?” she asked, turning to look back at the crowd. A few hands went up. One was a mother, at the edge of the crowd, who was had pushed her child behind her leg with one hand, the other holding her phone to her ear. Under her hijab, her face looked frightened, but resolute. Their eyes met for an instant, before Renee tore her eyes away, back to the man on the ground in front of her.</p>
<p>She knelt on the ground next to Batman’s head.</p>
<p>“Batman? Can you hear me? An ambulance is on its way,” she said.</p>
<p>He groaned weakly, high pitched and pained, and her heart lurched. In the background, she was vaguely aware of Bullock trying to shoo people away from the scene.</p>
<p>Renee bit her lip. She scanned his body again, trying to remember what those first aid training courses that Jim made everyone take every year would say. She couldn’t think of a way to try to stop the bleeding that was slowly spreading on the pavement without moving him, which seemed like a bad idea. Wildly, she thought of the good fortune of Batman lying next to a street gutter - it would make the crime-scene clean up easier.</p>
<p>The sound of approaching ambulance sirens was such a relief. They’d gotten here fast.</p>
<p>Two paramedics jumped out and immediately ran to Batman.</p>
<p>The street was calmer now, most of the crowd, aside from a few witnesses, had been scared away by Bullock. The only noise now was soft instructions from the paramedics to each other, and Batman’s raspy breathing.</p>
<p>She watched as they put a neck brace on, taped gauze to the worst of the wounds. At some point, Bullock came to stand behind her, quiet for once. Batman remained unconscious as they worked. One ran back to the truck and came back with a rigid board.</p>
<p>Methodically, they slid the board under him, and lifted him onto a stretcher. His cape, lopsided beneath him, trailed listlessly on the ground.</p>
<p>One paramedic finished securing Batman in the back of the ambulance, while the other one gathered up their supplies in the ground. He started to climb in the car when a thought struck Renee.</p>
<p>“Hey wait,” she said, stepping towards him. The paramedic turned, and <em>Christ,</em> she must be getting old, he looked so young. “Um, if you can. Try to keep his mask on, yeah?”</p>
<p>She couldn’t see much of his face from under his blue mask, but his eyes were solemn. “We’ll do our best.”</p>
<p>He got in the back and closed the doors behind him, and they sped away.</p>
<p> </p>
<hr/>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>BARBARA GORDON</em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Barbara woke suddenly, not sure when she fell asleep. The last thing she remembered was pulling up some files she’d been meaning to review, but she must have fallen asleep reading them on her couch.</p>
<p>That wasn’t surprising, really; it had been a long few weeks since the breakout at Arkham. She checked her watch and sighed. She’d slept through more than half the night.</p>
<p>She pulled herself into her wheelchair and wheeled herself over to her computers. She might as well check in and see what was going on before trying to get back to sleep.</p>
<p>Strangely, Bruce’s tracker wasn’t transmitting – odd for this time of night. She pulled up the live-feed of the cave on one of her monitors.</p>
<p>The cameras in the cave were top quality, all things considered, which meant that Barbara could see the whole mess in great detail. A work-bench was overturned, the delicate projects on it smashed on the ground, errant paper lying all over the place.</p>
<p>Most unsettling, she realized with a sinking heart, was that Jason’s memorial case had been smashed to bits, surrounded by a halo of broken glass.</p>
<p>She closed her eyes and took one deep breath to steady and calm herself, like Bruce had taught her years ago.</p>
<p>She rewound the cave’s cameras and started the playback, but kept the sound off.</p>
<p>She watched the men tumble into the room; Bruce, and the man who was somehow even bigger than Bruce.</p>
<p>The footage played as Barbara watched numbly, watched as the man attacked Bruce in his own cave. Bruce tried to fight back, but was clearly outmatched, barely able to get his own hits in. She watched as he was thrown into Jason’s glass case, as he was punched and thrown like a doll, and realized she was clenching her fists so tight they ached.</p>
<p>An alert popping up in her other monitor tore her gaze away from the devastation, a proximity alert for the ambulance returning to the cave. The vitals synced to her computer automatically, and a shaky pulse appeared in the corner, both relieving and concerning.</p>
<p>She looked back at the camera feed just to see Bruce be lifted above the other man’s shoulder and brought down savagely over his knee, and was suddenly, selfishly glad she had kept the sound off, as Bruce’s mouth twisted into a howl.</p>
<p>She paused the feed, taking another deep breath. She’d seen Bruce hurt before, but seeing <em>that</em> was different. Without the pulse still beating in the upper corner of the monitor, she would doubt that he was still alive.</p>
<p>On the current camera feed, Alfred and Tim were unloading Bruce from the ambulance, going straight to the med-bay. Content that nothing imminent was happening, she skimmed through the footage of the fight until she had a few clear headshots of the other man’s mask, and set up a facial recognition search in the city cameras. Hopefully his boxer-like mask would stay on long enough for her to get an idea of where he had headed.</p>
<p>Minutes later, satisfied with her search engine now running in the background, she turned back to the cave’s live-feed. Bruce looked somehow worse now, suit half removed and bruising spreading all over his body in sharp purples and reds, stark against white bandages. Alfred had wheeled the stretcher over to the x-ray machine, and was processing the images.</p>
<p>Her breath caught as the first image appeared on her monitor. She’d been expecting ribs, because he <em>must</em> have a few broken ribs from what she’d seen. But the chain of interlocking bone that flashed on her screen was even more familiar to her. She remembered the technicians pointing out the fragments of bone where the bullet had shattered them, and all the surgeries she’d had.</p>
<p>Bruce didn’t have any bone fragments in his spinal x-rays, but she knew enough to know what she was seeing, and the fractured lines stood out like the broken glass in the cave.</p>
<p>“Alfred,” she said into the cave. He jumped slightly from his place by the medical fridge, pulling out ice packs.</p>
<p>“Ms Gordon,” he said, recovering, “I didn’t know you were on comms tonight.”</p>
<p>“I just woke up. I can see the x-rays. What do you need?” Better to be blunt with it.</p>
<p>“I… I need to bring down the swelling, the ice won’t be enough. There’s a medication to treat it, Decadron, but it’s not always stocked in hospitals.”</p>
<p>“I’m looking,” she said, pulling up Gotham’s hospital’s inventory.</p>
<p>The moments the screen buffered as it searched stretched on and seemed to last forever.</p>
<p>“There’s some at Mercy General,” she said, relief flooding her body. She’d been worried it’d be at Gotham Hospital Center, on the far side of the city. “I bet my dad can ask them to release it, if you ask him. Send Tim.”</p>
<p>She looked back at her face scanner as Alfred explained the plan to Tim. No matches yet.</p>
<p>“I’m going to stay on the comms Alfred, just holler if you need anything.”</p>
<p>Barbara headed to her kitchen to make some coffee. It was going to be a long night.</p>
<p> </p>
<hr/>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>TIM DRAKE</em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>It would have been faster if he had taken the Batmobile. He’d petitioned for it, but Alfred had been worried about it being targeted, or attracting attention. That was OK, he supposed. He was plenty fast on the rooftops too.</p>
<p>And it was nice to be out of the cave, even if it felt selfish.</p>
<p>It had been unnerving, to say the least, to see Bruce like that. Tim had seen him in rough states before, but those were usually more mental than physical. The tilt in his back, how badly the suit was beat up and how bright the blood seemed to shine on the black material –</p>
<p>Tim had been there, when Bruce had sunk so low that he was barely Batman anymore, just a living shadow of rage and grief. Seeing him now, injured and unconscious on the ground was a similar feeling. The <em>something-was-deeply-wrong</em> writhing in his gut, a problem in the back of his mind itching to be fixed.</p>
<p>He had known something was up when Alfred had woken him, pounding on the door that they needed help. So strange to see Alfred so visibly worried, especially to the point of coming to fetch Tim himself.</p>
<p>Alfred had told him that Bruce was in a bad spot, that they were going to pick him up in the fake ambulance that they kept for emergencies. In hindsight, Alfred had tried to warn him of the severity on the drive, but in his own head, Tim hadn’t expected it to be that bad.</p>
<p>All his imaginings paled in comparison to seeing Bruce on the ground. Tim kept thinking of the way he’d lifted Bruce’s leg onto the stretcher, the awkward, painful angle...</p>
<p>He shook himself out of his thoughts, firing the grappling hook into the next building over. It was hard to keep the images out of his head, but the rush of cool summer air helped a little.</p>
<p>So it was good to be out of the cave, actually helping. He’d talk to Jim, and get the medicine that Bruce needed. And then things would be OK. Tim was only a few buildings away now.</p>
<p>It was strange to be out on the streets alone, no eyes watching his back. It wasn’t that he was scared, at least, not for himself, but –</p>
<p>He’d seen Bruce low before, when he’d needed Tim’s help. And Tim had brought him back then, hadn’t he? So Bruce would recover, and it would be fine.</p>
<p>There will always be a Batman. Tim will be his Robin, no matter what that meant.</p>
<p> </p>
<hr/>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>JIM GORDON</em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Jim’s shift had ended hours ago. Twice now he’d started to pack up his stuff, only to sink back into his chair. He should have started cleaning his office, which had quickly dissolved into a chaotic mess in the week since the Arkham breakout. But so far all he’d manage to do was watch the clock numbers go up.</p>
<p>He’d been almost out the door on his way home when one of the detectives ran up to him, clutching his radio and eyes wide with panic. The hours since then had been a blur, going to the scene, talking with Renee and Bullock, interviewing the witnesses himself, following one of their leads that was a cold dead end, before landing in his office chair again.</p>
<p>He looked out the window, considering going on the roof to get some fresh air and a smoke, but the idea of waiting up there some with the temptation of the unlit signal, for someone who wasn’t going to show up made him feel sick.</p>
<p>Sitting alone in his office with the window open wasn’t proving to be much better, but he just couldn’t go home yet.</p>
<p>What a terrible night, after a string of terrible nights. He still felt shame, hot and slick in his stomach, for how he’d talked to Renee when he’d arrived at the scene. He’d been on his way when the hospital finally got back to him, saying that an ambulance with Batman hadn’t arrived at either hospital, and she’d bore the brunt of his panic.</p>
<p>The clocked flickered over to the next hour as he watched.</p>
<p>“Thanks for leaving the window open,” said a voice from behind Jim.</p>
<p>He whirled around to see the familiar shape of Robin in his window.</p>
<p>His heart sank. He hadn’t realized how much he’d been holding out hope that somehow Renee and Bullock had got it wrong, that it wasn’t really Batman who’d been injured in the street.</p>
<p>“You’re alone,” said Jim, like it was a declaration of surrender.</p>
<p>“I need your help. <em>He</em> needs your help,” Robin said, not moving from his spot in the window.</p>
<p>“Anything.”</p>
<p>Robin stayed in the window while he explained the plan, then he was gone as suddenly as he appeared, leaving just the wind in his wake.</p>
<p>In the quiet of the office, Jim called the hospital, and the drug was there, just like Robin said it would be, and arranged for Bullock and Renee to pick it up.</p>
<p>He packed up his bag to leave, now that there was nothing more he could do, and started to head out, before curiosity got the better of him. Jim pulled out his phone and searched the drug’s name.</p>
<p>Even though he misspelled it, it came up. It was far too early in the morning to parse what most of it was saying, but the words <em>severe spinal trauma</em> seemed to jump off the page and land like a cold stone in his gut.</p>
<p>He thought of the urgency in Robin’s tone, how he’d appeared and gone without a single mocking quip, the fact that he was alone in the first place, no shadow over his shoulder.</p>
<p>He locked his office door behind him. He’d have a smoke first, then he’d head home.</p>
<p> </p>
<hr/>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>HARVEY BULLOCK</em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Bullock really wanted a drink. He could feel his flask burning a hole in his pocket, weighing down his steps. Unfortunate then, that Montoya was still with him tonight. She didn’t usually mind him having a few sips towards the end of a bad shift, but it seemed wrong to indulge tonight, when she’d been the one with a hard night.</p>
<p>Then again, they’d all had a very fucking hard night.</p>
<p>Bullock tried not to think much about the man in the street. Batman was a dead man, even if his body hadn’t caught on to that fact yet. People didn’t come back from injuries like those. He’d seen a lot through his career, lived through a lot, and so he spared Batman no pity. He was dead, or well on his way, he didn’t need it, unlike the rest of them still who were alive.</p>
<p>If anything, he was angry. Batman wasn’t supposed to lose.</p>
<p>The witnesses would tell everyone what they’d seen, and he imagined that most of the city would know within a few days. People would be distraught, and the scum of the city would see it as a free for all.</p>
<p>Montoya turned into the entry to the Mercy General emergency entrance.</p>
<p>“I’ll go in and grab it. You stay here in case Gordon radios again,” Bullock said, clicking out of his seatbelt.</p>
<p>“Sure,” she said, staring straight ahead.</p>
<p>It wasn’t the strangest instructions he’d gotten from Gordon, but <em>go to the hospital, pick up a bag of drugs (they’ll be expecting you), drive seven blocks north and put the bag on top of the car</em> was up there.</p>
<p>Surprisingly, the emergency room was empty Bullock entered, save for two nurses in their scrubs. Empty stretchers lined the room behind them, IV poles standing guard.</p>
<p>He flashed his badge by his hip.</p>
<p>“I’m Detective Bullock, I’m here for the dru- the medicine,” he corrected.</p>
<p>One of the nurses passed him a white first aid kit.</p>
<p>He accepted it with a nod and turned to go.</p>
<p>“How bad is it out there?” One of the nurses blurted out.</p>
<p>“What?”</p>
<p>“Is there an emergency? There’s been no news on the radio. How many should we expect?” the other one asked, trailing off. They looked nervous, he suddenly realized. Like they were bracing for bad news.</p>
<p>Bullock pinched his eyebrows together, confused, until he realized what they were asking. He supposed it wasn’t every day the commissioner of police called in with a specific drug request. The hospital must have thought there was a major attack happening outside, and was preparing for an influx of people needing help.</p>
<p>“There’s uh, nothing large scale that I know of, just a… freak accident,” he said.</p>
<p>He looked again at the IV poles, the stretchers lining the room. How many times had they had to prep for disasters, for Joker gas or poisons and explosions?</p>
<p>How much worse was it going to get without a Batman?</p>
<p>“Oh, that’s good,” the nurse said, visibly relieved. “You take care now Detective.”</p>
<p>“Yeah, sure, you too,” Bullock replied, not wanting to burst their bubble.</p>
<p>Batman had bought them years of feeling some semblance of safety. Maybe his last gift to them was this last safe night.</p>
<p> </p>
<hr/>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>ALFRED PENNYWORTH</em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Alfred stared at the oximeter. Bruce’s oxygen was holding steady, for now, after several very scary moments in the ambulance on the way here.</p>
<p>He was still concerned about the collapsed lung, fearing that a broken rib had punctured it, but there had been no serious dips since Alfred had aspirated it, so those fears, at least, seemed unfounded.</p>
<p>A small balm.</p>
<p>Broken nose. Fractured jaw. Broken ribs. Bruising across his skin. The cut down his forearm and side where glass had sliced through. The knee alone would need several surgeries, and would likely never be quite the same again.</p>
<p>And still all that paled in comparison to his <em>spine</em>.</p>
<p>He gripped the handle of the gurney tightly, watching his knuckles go white.</p>
<p>This, this was beyond his capabilities. There was a lot he could do, had done, countless wounds stitched and bones set. But this catastrophe was...</p>
<p>For all of Alfred’s nightmares, all the ways he saw the many ways Bruce could be killed, he had somehow never imagined that it might look quite like this. How many times had he pictured him dying alone, ripped to pieces by bullets or knives or teeth, never knowing the real horror was having him lying next to him in the cave, not knowing if he would pull through.</p>
<p>And even if he did, what shape would his body be in?</p>
<p>A wave of exhaustion hit Alfred so suddenly he sank into the chair by Bruce’s bed, hunched forward. He reached forward and brushed Bruce’s hair back from his forehead, revealing a cut that Alfred had missed in his first round of stitching, where his cowl had broken and cut into his head.</p>
<p>He took a shaky breath, relieved again that Tim had gone upstairs to eat, leaving this moment of weakness private.</p>
<p>Maybe Alfred should have taken Bruce to a hospital, done away with secret identities and dangerous nights in favour of seeing surgeons faster.</p>
<p>But even as the desperate thought crossed his mind it faded. He knew Bruce wouldn’t have wanted that, and Alfred never was good at dissuading him about matters like that.</p>
<p>Since they had not gone to a hospital, but desperately needed one, they would need to come up with a suitable fake injury for Bruce Wayne. Bruce himself was always very cautious not to allow anything suspicious to be traced back to him, but Alfred was rather certain that the news stations would be too busy covering the fall of Batman to worry about another injury to Bruce Wayne, even if this one seemed more dramatic than others.</p>
<p>He’d call Dick, he decided. He needed to update him on Bruce’s... condition, really should have done it hours ago. Between Dick and Tim, they’d come up with something suitable, and then there would be a reason for Bruce to be seen by surgeons. He could call Leslie maybe, to offer recommendations for people who might not be inclined to be discreet.</p>
<p>But that could wait a moment. He’d give himself two peaceful minutes, just to sit at his son’s side.</p>
<p> </p>
<hr/>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>DICK GRAYSON</em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Dick pushed down harder on the gas pedal. At this time of night, that was really closer to morning, there weren’t many other cars on the road, and the ones that were seemed to be in just as much of a hurry as him.</p>
<p>It wasn’t often Dick was woken up from a call from Alfred. Bruce sure, occasionally, but Alfred was polite enough to check what time it was before dialling.</p>
<p>Of course, that meant when Dick had rolled over in his bed to check what noise was coming from his phone, he immediately knew something was deeply wrong, for Alfred to call this early.</p>
<p>He hadn’t said many details on the phone, but had said enough to get Dick on his way to the manor in a hurry. Bruce was hurt, it was bad, his help was needed.</p>
<p>He kept his radio station on a Gotham news channel, but no one was reporting anything yet. Dick told himself that it was good news that there wasn’t a widespread disaster, but it also meant that he had no idea what he was walking into, aside from the fact that it had made Alfred sound scared on the phone, something Dick had only rarely heard before.</p>
<p>The highway streetlights flashed by over his head, almost flickering with the speed he was going. The weighted dread that had appeared in his stomach upon hearing Alfred’s call had only gotten heavier as he got closer to Gotham.</p>
<p>He hadn’t exactly been on great terms with Bruce since… But the idea of him, hurt and in pain still made Dick feel it in his gut as surely as he’d been injured as well. That hadn’t gone away, despite moving cities.</p>
<p>Bruce had always tried to hide his injuries from Dick, even as Dick started growing up. Dick may be a good detective, one of the best really, but Bruce’s instincts at hiding his wounds were always better. As a kid, Dick usually wouldn’t find out that something had gone wrong until Bruce was already healing, sore, but in the clear. Nowadays Dick would find out about them days later, if at all, which was brutally unfair, considering how Bruce still wanted to hear about every little paper cut.</p>
<p>He remembered, suddenly, mornings at the Manor after Bruce had a rough night. Dick would pretend to be sick, fooling no one, and then he and Bruce would watch movies and eat junk food. He had a distinct memory of Bruce, smiling slightly as he limped into the kitchen to get more ice cream. Dick couldn’t remember why he hadn’t gone himself, but there must have been a reason.</p>
<p>His hands tightened on the wheel. Whatever was bad enough that it made Alfred call him in the middle of the night, he hoped there would still be time to watch bad movies with Bruce after.</p>
<p> </p>
<hr/>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>BRUCE WAYNE</em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Everything hurt.</p>
<p>He came back to something approaching consciousness slowly, like waves lapping the tide. It was hard to get his bearings. His body felt like it was floating, everything a pulsing, aching blur, but he could feel something restricting in his throat, and the contrast made him dizzy to contemplate.</p>
<p>There were voices above him, or near him, speaking gently.</p>
<p>Alfred.</p>
<p>The name came in on the tide. It must be Alfred beside him. Maybe others too, but definitely him.</p>
<p>Which meant that something must have happened, something had gone wrong. But when he tried to think back and remember, his thoughts slipped away in the current, he couldn’t hold onto them.</p>
<p>Hopefully none of the kids were around. Especially Jason, who always got so upset whenever Bruce was injured.</p>
<p>It hurt so much.</p>
<p>Another wave of pain hit his body, and he tried to fight against it, but his brain seemed disconnected from his body, the nerves confused and misplaced, only hurting more. The voice above seemed more urgent for a moment, but Bruce couldn’t track what they were saying.</p>
<p>When the next wave hit, he didn’t fight it, let the sounds fade, and gratefully slipped under the water, back into the dark unconsciousness.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>... yeah he'll be fine.</p>
<p>Thanks for reading! If you enjoyed this, leave a comment, and come find me on <a href="http://batwayneman.tumblr.com"> tumblr</a>, same username as here.</p>
<p>Quotes taken from Detective Comics 664:<br/>"Batman is no more. I have destroyed him."<br/>“Here is your hero. Your protector. Take him and bury him.”</p>
<p>"Thanks for leaving the window open."<br/>“You’re alone.”<br/>“I need your help. He needs your help.”<br/>“Anything.”</p>
<p>"There'll always be a Batman."</p>
<p>I also took the name of the drug, Decadron, from the comics.</p></blockquote></div></div>
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